Decades before he sat in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, O.J. Simpson loomed in the backfield on a football field six miles away, his hands resting above grass-stained knee pads. Simpson cast an imposing presence, a towering 6-foot-2 tailback with a sprinter’s smooth stride. As a late fall afternoon in 1967 waned, he crouched in the backfield, steadying for another run.

The Trojans trailed UCLA by six points. Ten minutes remained. Needing eight yards on third down, quarterback Toby Page called an audible and triggered one of the most exhilarating finishes the city — and quite possibly the rest of the country — had ever seen from a football star. As Simpson took the handoff, he charged left for seven yards, then grabbed 57 more, zigzagging across the Coliseum turf with his unique blend of grit and grace. A crowd of more than 90,000 stood in awe and roared when he reached the end zone.

“It was a stunner,” says Steve Bisheff, the author of several books on USC football, former Orange County Register columnist and then a reporter for the now-defunct Santa Monica Evening Outlook. “I’ve seen a lot of football games, and that’s as big of a clutch run as I’ve ever seen.”

The touchdown on Nov. 18, 1967, propelled USC to a 21-20 triumph over UCLA, a chapter in this Los Angeles football rivalry billed the “Game of the Century.”

Fans rushed onto the field. Some lifted Simpson onto their shoulders. The Trojans ended as national champions.

The 64-yard winning dash left an enduring image of Simpson in cardinal and gold, the second of USC’s Heisman Trophy-winning tailbacks and among its greatest runners. Sports Illustrated in 2010 ranked the sequence as the second-greatest sports moment in Los Angeles history.

For decades, the snapshot of Simpson’s twisting path through UCLA’s defense glittered among the city’s greatest sports highlights, replayed and celebrated endlessly alongside Magic’s towering skyhook in the NBA Finals and Gibson’s arching home run in the World Series.

Saturday is the 50th anniversary of “The Run,” and USC and UCLA will again meet in late November at the Coliseum. But there will be no celebration. In the twilight of their lives, Simpson and his teammates from the fall of 1967 will not be cheered, nor receive on-field recognition during the game. There are no plans to formally commemorate the anniversary.

Twenty-seven years after Simpson raced past the Bruins and stormed into college football lore, the once-revered football star became America’s most infamous athlete, and in 1995, Simpson stood trial for the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman, ending in the controversial acquittal that is still being debated to this day.

“O.J.’s run was the run up until that time,” says Bob Jensen, a linebacker for the Trojans from 1967-69.

In 2017, the run conjures a wave of emotions, awash with as much unease as admiration, leaving each man to reflect and curate his own past.

“His character is now diminished, but not that athletic performance.”

— Mike Hull, senior USC fullback in 1967

FLICKERING MEMORY

On a cool summer evening at the end of its football training camp in August, USC held its annual “Salute to Troy” booster banquet. Families and friends of donors mingled with current players, coaches and athletic department staffers. Barbecue topped with chicken and baked beans filled round tables scattered across Cromwell Field. It felt like a summertime church picnic or family get-together mixed with the pomp and circumstance of collegiate sports, capped with fight songs and fireworks.

During the program this year, about a dozen players from the Trojans’ 1967 national championship-winning bunch appeared on a makeshift stage in front of bleachers packed with the marching band.

Adrian Young, a senior linebacker that season and captain, stood at a lectern. Donning a navy sports coat, Young spoke for four minutes about their significant moments together — hard-hitting practices, Coach John McKay and the dramatic finish against UCLA.
In this Nov. 9, 1968 file photo, USC tailback O.J. Simpson (32) runs against California during a game at the Coliseum. Simpson would go on to win the Heisman Trophy that year. (AP Photo/HF, File)

Not mentioned: O.J. Simpson or his legendary run.

“He was an incredible part of the team,” Young says, “but I think I was more interested in bringing up the people who were standing behind me, the players who were there, rather than someone who wasn’t.”

Simpson could not be there. He was still incarcerated, sitting in a prison in an unincorporated part of Nevada for a 2008 conviction for robbery and kidnapping.
He was paroled last month, but a homecoming at his alma mater remains ever unlikely. Simpson is barred from attending athletic department functions, including football practices. Only his memories can stay.

Neither Young nor other attendees said they were prevented from publicly mentioning Simpson.

“It was just one of those understood things,” says Fred Khasigian, a sophomore offensive guard in 1967.

Beforehand, the old teammates met in a lounge in Heritage Hall. In each other’s presence, a few talked about Simpson. But no one, including Young, their spokesman, pushed to retell stories of his football feats. Outside of the room, it was unspoken, a subject unfit for a family banquet.

“It’s like the big elephant in the room,” says Sid Smith, a sophomore offensive tackle in 1967, “but I think we all just decided no. No, we’re not going to talk about O.J. We’re not going to bring up his memory. We’re not going to do anything. We all know how good he was, but we won’t even mention his name.”

On the night after “Salute to Troy,” Smith met Khasigian for dinner in Little Armenia, on the eastern edge of Hollywood. The two friends reminisced about their time at USC. Soon, the conversation turned to Simpson.

Khasigian was one of two Trojans players interviewed for last year’s ESPN prize-winning film “O.J.: Made in America,” which documented Simpson’s fall from grace in vivid detail. Smith couldn’t stomach to watch the mammoth documentary, so Khasigian relayed his comments. He had spoken about Simpson’s talent on the field and blossoming celebrity status after the run to beat UCLA: “the cult of O.J.”

Smith agreed. He was a good teammate, too, he added.

But the men were still stumped by his more recent cycle of transgressions. They wondered what happened, why Simpson ruined his life.
In this June 21, 1995, file photo, O.J. Simpson holds up his hands before the jury after putting on a new pair of gloves similar to the infamous “bloody gloves” during his double-murder trial in L.A. (AP Photo/Vince Bucci, Pool, File)

All of them followed the saga starting in 1994. Simpson was charged with murder a few days after police discovered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman had been fatally stabbed, their bodies lying in pools of blood outside her Brentwood condominium. Prosecutors pointed to O.J.’s history of domestic violence and introduced DNA evidence in the following year’s “Trial of the Century.” O.J. tried on gloves. They didn’t fit. Ultimately, a jury declared him not guilty, a controversial and often re-examined verdict. According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released in 2015, three-fourths of Americans, believe he is guilty, and a civil court in the years after found him liable for the slayings.

Smith and Khasigian agreed Simpson would benefit from a return to campus, a chance to re-embrace the rest of their team. Next season’s event would honor the 50th anniversary of the 1968 team, the season Simpson won the Heisman Trophy. But they realize Simpson will not be there either, wistful for years past.

When the 1967 team celebrated its 25th anniversary at a Los Angeles hotel in 1992, it had been Simpson who spoke to the players. “Standard talk,” Khasigian says, but they could then together toast to football triumphs.

‘LET HIM DO HIS THING’

Before O.J. Simpson’s run against UCLA, quarterback Toby Page expected to pass. On third-and-long, even the Trojans of “student-body-right” fame needed to sling it.

They hoped a pass to wide receiver Ron Drake might at least net a first down.

“I wasn’t going to go 64 yards,” Drake says.

But movement from UCLA’s defense triggered the audible to a run, “23-Blast, after a linebacker left an eight-man box to shift toward Drake.

In previous practices, Coach John McKay instituted a rule. If a defensive player vacated the box, the quarterback should call “23-Blast” to take advantage of one less tackler to block near the line of scrimmage. It was a play-call often used in short-yardage situations — McKay explained blast plays should yield “violent collisions” — but they stuck with it.

Simpson’s natural ability made the difference by turning it into a breakaway run, slithering though hopeless UCLA tacklers. After he took the handoff, Simpson went left, sliced through a pair of linemen, bounced off two more linebackers, broke for the north sideline and accelerated toward the middle of the field. As much as he was regarded for his size and speed, few running backs could cut and sniff out open space like Simpson. It made him a football dream.

The Trojans’ coaches noticed Simpson’s instincts at one practice in the spring of 1967. Afterward, McKay offered some advice to assistant coach Jim Stangeland.

“Just let him do his thing,” McKay said.

It’s why this running back is inseparable from this run. The creativity was his distinct style, that players still marveled. Simpson also ran for a touchdown in the first half.

“His character is now diminished,” says Mike Hull, a senior fullback in 1967, “but not that athletic performance.”

Years later, Simpson beamed when the run was brought up. He called it the highlight of his athletic career, a feat surpassing his world record in the 440-yard relay or becoming the first NFL running back to rush for 2,000 yards.

“I never felt more elated or joy after any athletic event than I did after that game,” said Simpson, according to the book, “UCLA vs. USC: 75 years of the Greatest Rivalry in Sports.”

Messages left to speak with Simpson for this story went unreturned by his attorney.

Simpson now lives in a gated community on the west side of Las Vegas. His highlights most often make TMZ.

MADE FAMOUS

The man who lined up in an I-formation with O.J. Simpson for most of his two seasons at USC was a stocky, 210-pound fullback named Dan Scott.

Their college careers would be forever intertwined. At the final team banquet following the 1968 season, Coach John McKay introduced both Scott and Simpson in succession.

“He was charming. He was a great teammate. Just wonderful. That’s why the second half of the story doesn’t really go with the first part of it.”

— Bob Klein, 1967 USC tight end, on O.J. Simpson

While Simpson went onto a Hall of Fame NFL career and parlayed that into becoming an American pop culture icon, Scott never played a down of professional football. He worked his entire life in construction, became a crane operator and moved 37 times from Florida to Hawaii.

In recent years, he settled with his wife in Troy, Pa., a small town with a population of little more than 1,000 near the New York state border. There is little fame there, mostly obscurity. Scott’s time with Simpson and the Trojans marked his moment in the limelight.

It was Simpson who first introduced Scott to football fans across southern California, offering glowing praise about his fullback whenever he could. Scott’s mother kept many newspaper articles in which he was mentioned. “That’s my fullback!” Simpson often told strangers. Scott still feels grateful for the recognition.

“If it hadn’t been O.J. there,” Scott says, “maybe I wouldn’t have been thought of as that good of a blocker.”

His now polarizing status leaves Scott with tangled emotions.

How does a man reconcile his brightest sports memory when it’s intersected with this country’s most notorious athlete, O.J. Simpson?

Scott calls the turn of events in his former teammate’s life “sad” and puzzling. He wonders if Simpson would remember him if they were to meet again, so many years after their friendship faded.

“I always felt,” Scott says, “if everybody was gone in this world, and I could run into him, him and me, 1-on-1, ‘Remember me O.J.? It’s Danny.’ I want to know exactly what happened. But it’s life. It’s too bad.”

He worries if the memories of the run will hold in time. Scott makes one of the first blocks before Simpson runs 64 yards against UCLA. The anniversary, he knows, will pass with little more than a murmur.

“It puts a cloud on the bright day,” Scott says.
USC football players, Ron Yary, Tim Rossovich, O.J. Simpson and Adrian Young, left to right, visit the set of the movie “Star” at 20th Century-Fox Studios in Hollywood on Dec. 13, 1967 and get a football autographed by movie star Julie Andrews. Also on hand is Robert Wise, third from right, who directed the picture. (AP Photo/David Smith)

That day marked the climax of a proud time in many of their lives. Both Ron Drake and Bob Klein, a senior tight end in 1967, always wear their national championship rings. Others keep scrapbooks of the 1967 season filled with overflowing photos, game programs and newspapers clippings.

As he did against UCLA, Simpson often stood at the center of their important moments. He ran for 1,543 yards and 13 touchdowns as a junior that season, carrying the ball almost 300 times.

“O.J. made that team,” says Steve Lehmer, a sophomore offensive guard in 1967.

Over the past couple of months, 16 players from the Trojans’ 1967 national championship team spoke with the Southern California News Group. Most of them described Simpson, the one-time football star, in favorable terms as a player: “the hardest working guy on the team,” “humble,” “supportive,” “very affable,” “a funny loudmouth,” and “one-of-the-guys kind of guy.”

These were their prized memories amid his rise to prominence, long before notoriety, and they were ones that once promised to remain for the rest of their lives. Some seek to preserve them like a period frozen in time.

“I only lived with him in the late 60s,” says Steve Sogge, a junior quarterback in 1967. “And I choose — my choice — to remember him that way.”

But that past can fade out of focus.
Former Minnesota Vikings great and USC offensive tackle Ron Yary holds his bronze bust after enshrinement into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio in 2001. (AP Photo/Mark Duncan)

Simpson might have lifted USC to a critical win, but Ron Yary, the Outland Award-winning offensive tackle in 1967, sees Simpson as more connected to the “Trial of the Century” than to the “Game of the Century.”

Yary did not attend the team’s 50th reunion at the “Salute to Troy.” He watched his son’s high school football scrimmage for Vista Murrieta instead. He professes to have no interest in celebrating the year with Simpson; anyone else on the team, he says, would be significant.

“Just because he was a great player doesn’t mean anything,” Yary says. “I’m just happy you played on the same team as me. We’re all equal.”

He has never watched a replay of the run. Character dwarfs gridiron feats.

Some believe other moments from the win should prompt celebration. The Trojans were positioned for a go-ahead touchdown because of an extra point blocked earlier by Bill Hayhoe. Their defense too held a one-point lead by keeping a UCLA offense, led by the 1967 Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Gary Beban, scoreless for the final 10 minutes. The team was stockpiled with talent. Five players were taken in the first round of the NFL Draft the next year, including Yary, the top pick.

But it’s hard to forget Simpson, the leading man so often in their playing careers.

“He made our careers, because he was so good, he could run so much,” Klein says. “He carried us. He wasn’t the only guy on the team. He had to have people blocking for him and stuff. But world-class sprinter, big guy. He was charming. He was a great teammate. Just wonderful. That’s why the second half of the story doesn’t really go with the first part of it.”

WHAT TO CELEBRATE

Traffic snarled on the 110 Freeway, and the McKay family Buick, headed north to their West Covina home, halted. J.K. McKay, then 14 years old and the oldest son of John McKay, was sitting in the backseat with his younger sisters. Other cars stopped as well.

When some fans noticed USC’s head coach was behind the wheel, they stepped outside and into the stalled traffic to congratulate him.

“It was like a party on the 110,” J.K. says. “It was pretty amazing.”

The afternoon remains one of J.K.’s earliest sports memories. He still considered USC’s victory among the top-10 wins in program history. After the fourth-ranked Trojans upended the top-ranked Bruins, they moved to the top of the Associated Press poll for their second of four national championships under John McKay, the program’s most successful run during college football’s modern era. During the game, J.K. sat on the sideline with his grandfather, Kenny. As anticipation built, Kenny covered his eyes, unable to watch the critical moments.

But recent history colors a win so prominently featuring O.J. Simpson.

“I know everybody’s reluctant to talk about it and talk about him in a positive way, even as a player,” McKay says.

McKay, a receiver for the Trojans from 1972-74 and later a Los Angeles attorney, joined USC’s athletic department in 2010, alongside his childhood best friend, Pat Haden, who had been hired as its director. They stepped down last year.

For more than 20 years, administrators have wrestled with questions on how to place the tailback’s athletic feats among the Trojans’ football tradition.

How does a school remember this era?
The retired No. 32 O.J. Simpson jersey remains featured in the peristyle entrance of the Coliseum with the other Trojans who have won the Heisman Trophy. (Photo by John McCoy, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

“He was a shining light to everyone who looked at him. And it was all just thrown away. It was like going from the archangel to Lucifer, the devil, instantly.”

— Ron Yary, former USC offensive tackle, on O.J. Simpson’s legacy

“We just tried to do it in as respectful a way as we could,” McKay says. “You can’t ignore it, but you don’t want to over-celebrate it. It’s just difficult. He’s got a Heisman Trophy there. What do you do with it? There’s no good answer. Whatever you do, you’re kind of wrong either way.”

There are a handful of prominent commemorations of Simpson’s football career at USC. A copy of his Heisman Trophy rests on a display mount in the lobby of Heritage Hall. A retired No. 32 jersey drapes a section of the peristyle end of the Coliseum, where he crossed the goal line against UCLA 50 years ago.

There are few other celebrations.

After Heritage Hall was renovated several years ago, the new lobby included several museum-like portals. One selection displays USC’s national championship-winning football seasons, including 1967. It names three players from that season: Ron Yary, Adrian Young, and Mike Battle, who returned two punts for touchdowns that season. It makes no mention of Simpson’s run. The sequence isn’t likely to be displayed on the Coliseum video board. USC, a football program of 11 national championships and six Heisman Trophy winners, can more easily accentuate other achievements. For the players of 1967, it’s the moment they lived, their taste of a title.

Simpson’s rushing records are kept, detailed in USC’s annual media guides, and this week’s media notes designate the 50th anniversary of the run.

“We have always recognized O.J.’s football accomplishments at USC, his honors and his records and his on-field accomplishments,” says Tim Tessalone, the school’s longtime sports information director. “What happened after he left USC is beyond our scope.”

No other current athletic department officials were made available for this story.

The run might not be extolled, but it’s not whitewashed.

Campus debate has at times stirred about how to celebrate Simpson’s college football career and signature play.
O.J. Simpson poses with his Heisman Trophy in New York City on Dec. 5, 1968. When the Heisman is awarded, the player gets one and his school gets the another. Simpson sold his to partially pay the wrongful death judgment against him, and USC’s was stolen in 1994, but later replaced. (Associated Press file photo)

The Daily Trojan, USC’s student newspaper, last year ran a column urging the school to remove Simpson’s Heisman Trophy from Heritage Hall: “It’s just hard to swallow the fact that a convict’s trophy still sits on campus for public viewing.”

Jody Armour, a noted USC law professor who studies issues of sports, race and society, compared it to recent events such as the renaming of Calhoun College at Yale University. The residential college had until recent years been named for John C. Calhoun, a pro-slavery 19th-century statesman.

“A university like this is a place like a lot of universities,” Armour says, “that’s trying to carefully curate its heroes, those it wants to celebrate, those it wants to lift up as exemplars for the community.”

Some of USC’s players expressed dismay that the team won’t be honored Saturday, but none argued that Simpson should be a part of any celebration.

“He’s getting the rejection,” Yary says, “because of all the applause, all the attention, all the respect, all the honor. He was on a pedestal. He was a shining light to everyone who looked at him. And it was all just thrown away. It was like going from the archangel to Lucifer, the devil, instantly.”

The play’s singular joy has been wiped away with time. It no longer evokes simple euphoria at USC, instead teeming with an array of emotions, leaving those in its wake to confront their own feelings of the past.

Fred Khasigian, now an orthopedic surgeon in Sacramento, arrived at one conclusion.

Until the 1990s, Khasigian kept signed Simpson memorabilia along an office wall, between a waiting room and an operatory, including autographed pictures of the running back.

After Simpson was accused of murder, he took them down.

“Best not to have controversy around all the time,” Khasigian says.
1967 USC football team that won a national championship. Coach John McKay sits center in the front row (fifth from left). O.J. Simpson (32) is in the second row, fifth from right.(Photo courtesy of USC)

One image remained in his office, the black-and-white team photo of USC’s 1967 national championship team. Six rows of the players sit on the bleachers with their coaches. In the second row, one player to the left of center, is a man sitting in his No. 32 road uniform.

If you look closely enough, you see O.J. Simpson, a fixture in their biggest triumphs. The tailback is no longer prominent, but inseparable.

Joey Kaufman is the USC beat writer for the Southern California News Group. Since joining the Orange County Register in 2015, he has also covered Major League Baseball and UCLA athletics. His work has been recognized by the Associated Press Sports Editors and Football Writers Association of America. Kaufman grew up in beautiful downtown Burbank.